Cars and Ships

This week I had an encounter with a traffic warden who told me that I should have bought a ticket to put on my car in the Sandbanks car park. Payment is required 24 hours a day. It was fortunate that Jade and I had left the beach and arrived back at the car in time to see him looking at it. He said he would let me off the £35 penalty. He also said that if I arrived as usual at 10 to 8 a £1.50 ticket would only take me up to 07:59 instead of giving the usual hour. There’s something wrong there and I might write to the council about that. I didn’t blame the warden who was very chatty and trying to be helpful. Apparently I can buy a £78 ticket that will give me free parking at any beach car park for a year. I could have told him that would be more than 50% of a week’s state pension, and I have rather more pressing things to spend it on, but I didn’t.

Since that morning I haven’t driven into the car park. We’ve walked elsewhere. But Jade loves to run on the beach, so this morning I parked outside the row of shops across the road from the car park. You can have up to 20 minutes there. Then we strode quickly across the car park for a fairly brief visit to the beach and got back with seconds to spare.

On the way back as usual I took the scenic route harbourside and along the quay. We had a good view of the Brittany Ferries Barfleur on her way out of the harbour to sail to France. In this photo, which I found at Wikimedia Commons, it looks as though she is coming the opposite way towards the port in Poole Harbour.

Pic by Chris Allen

I also found this pic of the Condor Ferries Catamaran sitting in port, just as we see it every morning.

pic by Collin Foot